Word: stores
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Business as a whole found last week's election thoroughly satisfactory. But for one major U. S. business it was profoundly disappointing -in Colorado the chain stores lost their second major battle with the tax ogre. First such battle was over the proposed California chain-store tax in 1936, which the chains defeated by a mighty publicity and advertising campaign. Colorado has had a chain-store tax since 1934 and last week it came up for referendum. Despite another mighty publicity and advertising barrage, Colorado voted No to repeal...
...State chain-store taxes go Colorado's is mild, since it is graduated from $2 for the first store up to $300 for each store over 24. But it is the only State chain-store tax actually voted into existence. Similar taxes in 21 other States were all enacted by legislatures inspired by particular groups...
Colorado's chain-store tax decision is of national importance because awaiting the new Congress is Representative Wright Patman's bill admittedly designed to tax interstate chains out of existence. Proposed at the last session but not voted on, the Patman bill would tax stores on a graduated scale to a maximum of $1,000 times the number of stores times the number of States. For the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.'s 11,752 stores this tax would be $458,328,000, more than half A. & P.'s 1937 gross sales. Melville Shoe Corp...
Time was when a proposal like that would only have made the chains laugh. But Wright Patman has already put over the Robinson-Patman Act limiting rebate and other chain-store practices. And the steady increase in State chain-store taxes has assumed the shape of a national trend. Two months ago, therefore, A. & P., bull's-eye of Wright Patman's attack, broke its 79-year policy of silence on "public and private questions" with a "Statement of Public Policy" advertised in 1,300 newspapers over the signatures of Brothers George L. and John A. Hartford...
Having made such points as these the chains claim that the real reason behind Wright Patman's proposal is the bitter hatred which chain-store efficiency breeds in competitive wholesalers and independents. This efficiency rests upon two prime pegs - ability to buy in huge quantities and elimination of numerous wholesale and other middleman functions which add markups to food costs. Such benefits can be obtained by independents through use of supermarkets or of voluntary chains...